The country seems untroubled by its increasing international isolation, an attitude perhaps born out of 60 years of making it work underneath improbable, impossible circumstances. If we’ve made it this far, goes the thinking, who the hell is going to stop us?

While the Gazans’ poverty-stricken lives have now received a new dollop of war, pain, and death, the majority of Israel runs as usual. People watch the news a little bit more and worry about their relatives or friends serving in the army, but the level of tragedy is drastically unbalanced.

“It was too much, I’m glad we’re attacking,” a cab driver told me Sunday, then complaining about Russia’s call for peace by referencing Georgia. “[The war’s] no good, but it’s scary, a rocket hit the house next to mine,” a girl on the train said to me about Beersheeva.